


What Grows Underground

by Pholo



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gladiator Shiro, M/M, Prince Keith, flower: rose, hanakotoba zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 05:57:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15527643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pholo/pseuds/Pholo
Summary: Keith stopped before the door. He pinched the flower between his fingers and peered through the cell window.“Explain,” Keith ordered, as he held up the flower.Through the gloom of the cell, Keith caught a flash of movement. For a moment there was silence. Then a voice said,“It’s a rose. I think.”Shiro never escaped the arena. Keith is a Galran prince.A fic for the Hanakotoba zine! This story was illustrated byGitwreckedandGentlemandeerlord! I'll link to their pieces once they're posted!





	What Grows Underground

**Author's Note:**

> It was such an amazing honor to work with all these talented artists and writers...GOOD LORD. Thank you guys for everything—and thank you to everyone who bought a copy of Hana!!

The creature’s armored head struck an arena pillar. A hearty crack split the air.

The prisoner rolled away from the blast. Chunks of rock formed craters on the arena floor. As he sprung back onto his feet, a projectile caught him across the side; he cried out, and Keith stifled a wince. From where he sat in the front row of the arena, he could see the sweat on the prisoner’s face.

The general beside Keith scratched his chin, his lips a firm line.

“Not long now,” he mused.

Keith tracked the prisoner’s feet as he ran. It was cloudy on their outpost planet; dark so the blood on the ground looked more black than red.

The crowd whooped and hollered as the prisoner’s prosthetic clashed against the creature’s teeth. Like the creature, he had been altered by Haggar. The prisoner’s magical limb was a symbol of the empire’s prowess; a prototype for future Galra soldiers.

But Haggar’s advancements were for nought. The creature had the prisoner cornered at the edge of the arena. As the prisoner raised his altered arm, it pounced, a rush of dust and scales and bloody teeth.

Keith didn’t look away. He didn’t close his eyes. He would face this, like he’d faced the deaths of countless others, and he would remember.

The moment hung, precarious. The prisoner seemed to brace himself. In the split second before the creature’s teeth met his neck, he dived to the ground. The creature’s pelt glowed under the light of the prisoner’s arm; he struck upward with his hand, and there was a terrible ripping noise.

The creature let out a scream, guttural and ancient. The prisoner’s hand had punctured some vital organ; blood poured from its chest. The prisoner rolled out from beneath the animal as it crumpled. The crowd roared.

The prisoner staggered to his feet. His right arm was gloved in blood, his left pressed to the wound on his side. He looked up as the audience chanted his name:

“Champion! Champion! Champion!”

One of the more daring fans tossed a flower. It landed a short distance from Champion’s feet. The prisoner stared down at it, and Keith recognized his look from the battlefield; the empty space behind a soldier’s eyes.

Finally the prisoner stooped, plucking the flower from the ground with bloodied fingers. He turned to the crowd, and his eyes met Keith’s.

There was a tick of pause. Something like determination came down over the prisoner’s face. He stepped forward, away from the bleeding beast, towards Keith in the stands.

Keith felt the general beside him bristle; felt the tension rise in his part of the crowd. He didn’t dare move. Something in him feared the moment would shatter if he jostled it.

The prisoner reached out with his reddened hand. He pointed the flower at Keith, and surprised him with a smile—a grim one, full of challenge. Keith felt the crowd melt away around him, his world narrowed down to the figure on the edge of the arena.

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Then the witch activated the prisoner’s arm, and reality resumed with a scream. Champion fell to his knees. The flower tumbled from his fingers. Keith looked on as the guards gathered his limp form between their hands.

The general stood as they dragged Champion away, his fingers still braced around his sword hilt.

“How disgusting,” he said. “For a prisoner to address a _prince_ in such a way…It’s a shame the beast didn’t bite his head off.”

“A shame,” Keith agreed distantly. His eyes didn’t leave the flower on the ground.

 

There was a slot on the side of Champion’s cell for meal trays and pills, and a window at the center-top of the door, about two feet across with bars down the middle. Keith suppressed a cough as he approached. The air downstairs was cool and choked with dust.

Keith stopped before the door. He pinched the flower between his fingers and peered through the cell window.

“Explain,” Keith ordered, as he held up the flower.

Through the gloom of the cell, Keith caught a flash of movement. For a moment there was silence. Then a voice said,

“It’s a rose. I think.”

The prisoner’s voice was kinder than Keith expected. He exhaled loudly through his nose. “I’m aware of that.” He wasn’t. “Why did you try to give it to me?”

“I saw you. Recognized you. Wanted to get your attention.”

“In the most gaudy way possible.”

“Got you down here, didn’t I?” There was a lilt to the prisoner’s tone. Was he amused? “I wasn’t gonna’ shout at you. Doubt you would’ve heard me over the crowd.” A pause. “And I might’ve been delirious from blood-loss...”

Keith cut to the chase: “You wish to plan an escape.”

“Maybe.” Keith could make out a metal sheen as Champion raised his prosthetic arm, now fitted with a clamp. “First I need you to figure out how to deactivate this. Haggar wants to use it to control me. Once it’s finished, she’s going to send me back to my unit. I’m the commander of a large fleet; I could do some damage.”

Keith felt his hand twitch at his side. “You expect me to side against my brethren?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

There was a bob of color amidst the cell’s shadows; a shift as the prisoner leaned back against the wall.

“Back in the field there were rumors about a Galra prince with human blood,” Shiro said. “‘Kandonar.’ Supposedly he worked undercover for the rebel cause.”

Keith felt the flower in his hands. “I prefer to be called ‘Keith.’”

“Mm?”

“Zarkon calls me Kandonar,” Keith elaborated. “My mother called me Keith.”

“So you don’t deny your mixed allegiances.”

“I don’t mind you knowing. Who would listen to you?” Keith shrugged. “No one trusts the word of a lowly prisoner.”

“Sure sounds like you do.”

Keith didn’t have a retort for that.

“If we’re going to work together, you might as well know my name,” the prisoner offered. “I’m Shiro.”

 

“She’s covered her tracks,” Keith griped. He was hunkered against the outside wall of Shiro’s cell, discouraged by their lack of headway. “She obviously doesn’t want anyone to know about your arm. I doubt she’s even told Zarkon.”

Shiro made a frustrated noise. He tapped his metal finger against the cell floor. “She must be keeping records somewhere…”

“Not that I’ve seen.” Keith frowned. “What would happen if we just cut it in half?”

“I’d die. She made that very clear.” A moment of consideration. “But there has to be a way to break it without killing me. Some kind of setting or code we could change.”

“I’ll keep an eye out.”

A pause settled upon them like a blanket. Keith counted the dust motes that shifted through the hall lights.

“It’s lucky you made a show with that flower,” he said finally. “People would be suspicious, otherwise.”  

“Mm?” Shiro said. “How do you mean?”

“Well, I come here so often. There’d be talk of conspiracy, under normal circumstances. As it is, people just assume I’m screwing you.”

Keith though he heard a snort behind the door. “Is...that so?”

“Yes. Actually, I plan to capitalize on the situation. If we could pull off a convincing romance, the guards might be persuaded to let me take you out of the—what?”

The chuckling through the door was muffled, like Shiro had a hand clamped over his mouth. “Just—I’m sorry,” he said. “I know there’s nothing funny about the situation.”

“Then why are you…?”

“You,” Shiro said. He went on: “You’re so straightforward about everything, and kind, and you want to believe the mages would open the door for us so you could take me on—I don’t know, a date?”

Keith scrunched up his face. “I said the guards, not the mages. If the mages had their way, they wouldn’t let a pebble out of your cell.”

“The point still stands.”

“Fine.” Keith wandered away from the cell, towards the stairwell. “We’ll come up with a better plan. In terms of the actual war—I’m needed upstairs within the varga.”

Shiro called after him as he took the first step: “Stay safe out there, Keith.”

Keith felt himself falter as he moved up the stairwell. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had told him that. In the moment before he rounded the bend, he managed to work the words out of his mouth:

“See you soon, Shiro.”

 

Shiro couldn’t evade the arena forever. Between missions, Keith did his best to curb the pain. He snuck little comforts down to Shiro’s cell: fruits and snacks from the kitchen; herbs and lotions for his injuries; a clean set of prison garb. Shiro refused to accept the blanket he brought one night, as the weather made a turn for the worse.

“It wouldn’t be fair to the others,” he said.

Keith frowned at him. “If you live by the discomfort of the less fortunate, you’ll never eat, drink, or sleep again.” He worked the blanket farther between the bars. “I’ve spoken to the guards already. I’ll pull some strings; push for better conditions. At the moment, you need to stay warm and healthy for your escape.”

For a time the blanket hung crunched between the bars like a fallen curtain. Then, gently, Shiro guided the fabric through the gap. It was the closest Keith had ever seen him, and even now he could only make out the glint of his hand.

“Thank you,” Shiro murmured.

A warm feeling spread through Keith’s chest—slowly, like an unclenched fist or a flower blooming. He thought he caught a glimpse of Shiro’s eyes in the dark, and he smiled.

 

The arena was stained with Galra blood. In the aftermath of the fight, Keith’s feet took him down the dank stairwell to Shiro’s cell.

“Shiro,” Keith said, as he crossed to the bars. He had been taught to speak coldly, with authority. For Shiro, he tried to be gentle. “Talk to me.”

For a while Keith worried he wouldn’t. The seconds ground by, quiet and muffled underground.

Then a shape shifted on the floor.

“Why wouldn’t he kill me?” Shiro murmured. There was a gleam of light as he clenched his metal hand. “He had a sword—I told him how. What stopped him?”

Keith blinked. “Ulaz was an honorable Galra. He sought a fair fight.”

“Well, he sure as hell didn’t get one. Haggar took over before I could even—” Shiro stopped, at a loss. “It doesn’t make sense. He’s been in this fight longer than I’ve been alive. He’s stronger and wiser than I’ll ever be. The war _needs_ him.”

“Shiro.” Keith stepped closer to the bars, frustrated at the lack of light. “Don’t do this to yourself. There are people out there who need you too; I know there are. Prisoners don’t survive down here without someone to get back to.”

Shiro went stock still on the floor. Keith thought he could see the outline of his back where he lay curled at the far corner; perhaps the edge of a blanket.

Keith raised his hands, gripping the bars so tightly his knuckles turned white. He was painfully conscious of the sheathed knife at his side.

“Shiro,” he pleaded. Shiro didn’t move. “Come here, would you?”

Another long pause. Footsteps rattled overhead as two guards patrolled the upper floor.

Shiro uncurled from his place on the floor. Keith swallowed as he stood. He moved towards the window with practiced steps, stopping a hair’s breadth from the bars.

It was the first time his face had caught the hallway light. Shiro’s eyes were a warm grey. The scar on his nose had tiny raised edges. If Keith strained, he could make out the clamp around his bicep.

“Keith,” he said, when the silence dragged on. “I need you to kill me.”

Keith bristled. His fingers twisted around the bars. “Absolutely not.”

“The arm’s working, Keith. I killed Ulaz, and I didn’t feel a damn thing.” Shiro’s gaze was steely. “You can’t let Haggar send me back to the rebels like this.”

“I won’t.” Keith let his hands fall between the bars. Shiro startled as his fingers found the side of his face. “Just—”

He couldn’t go on. Desperate to make Shiro understand, he coaxed him forward. Their foreheads met in the gap between the bars. For the first time in deca-phoebs, Keith felt his eyes sting.

“I brought you a rose,” he settled on at last, because the other words wouldn’t come. “I found one for you before the fight—I was going to give it to you afterward. I didn’t know Ulaz would...”

There was the barest gust of air as Shiro exhaled; his breath was gentle against Keith’s cheek. His eyes fluttered closed. Keith’s fingers relaxed along his jaw.

“Give me your hand?” Keith asked.

For a long moment Shiro didn’t move. Then he drew back—only barely. He reached up with both hands to capture Keith’s left between his own.

Shiro squeezed Keith’s palm. Then he presented his prosthetic hand, fingers threaded through Keith’s.

Keith swallowed down the lump in his throat. With his free hand, he reached into his coat, withdrawing a rose. It was slightly crumpled, and the shade of red unique to sunsets.

“I found a way to deactivate your arm,” Keith said, as he loosened his grip around Shiro’s fingers. He passed the rose into Shiro’s hand. “Yesterday. I put off telling you because I knew you’d demand I try it.”

“It’s risky?” Shiro guessed.  

“That arm wasn’t built to come off, Shiro.”

Keith stared at Shiro as his fingers curled around the rose stem. The prisoner braved that same determined smile.

Keith couldn’t smile back. He drew Shiro’s hand father through the gap, puzzling out the clasp on the underside of his wrist. He picked the panel open with some trouble. Two wires peeked out from the guts of the prosthetic.

Shiro watched as Keith fished his knife from its sheath. He never let go of the rose.

“It should still be operational as a weapon,” Keith said. He forced his voice not to waver. “But Haggar won’t be able to reach you.”

“If this works.”

Keith nodded. “If this works.”

Keith’s blade hovered over the wire in Shiro’s arm. Keith could see the quintessence shift beneath the wire’s shell; pink and purple streaks that made Keith’s stomach churn.

The rose twitched with Shiro’s hand. Keith cupped his free hand over Shiro’s clasped fingers.

“Ready?” Keith managed.

Shiro let a breath out through his teeth. He looked at Keith, and suddenly Keith knew, with absolute certainty, that he wouldn’t die. It wasn’t possible; the universe couldn’t bear the loss of him.

“Do it,” Shiro said.

And so Keith brought down the knife. He didn’t look away. He didn’t close his eyes.

They would face this world together.

 

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